{“Body Text”/}If you think Nirvana, Pearl Jam or Soundgarden is the grunge band that's had the biggest impact on today's music, you're probably older than 18 and not listening to the same thing that millions of kids are.

Which brings us to Alice in Chains, the Seattle band that drew up the blueprint for modern heavy metal during the first half of the '90s, inspiring Godsmack, Taproot, Staind and dozens of other brooding hard rockers. Even Metallica cited Alice in Chains as a major influence on some of its more recent work.

After releasing three albums, two of which topped the charts, Alice in Chains went into hibernation while lead singer Layne Staley dealt with his well-publicized problems with drug addiction. When he died in 2002 from an overdose of heroin and cocaine, most assumed that the band would never be heard from again.

Now, Alice in Chains is back, with a new lead vocalist and its first studio CD in 14 years, and sounding like it never left.

On Monday — the eve before the release of “Black Gives Way to Blue” — the group performed a sold-out show at the Fillmore in San Francisco. It was one of the hottest tickets of the season, with scalpers demanding hundreds of dollars for ducats and scores of people outside the venue practically begging to get in.